


All Queens, and All Their Favourites

by Northland



Category: Element of Fire - Martha Wells
Genre: Castles, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:39:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northland/pseuds/Northland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first hint of anything strange (well, stranger than usual) was the small whirlwind in Kade’s kitchen fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Queens, and All Their Favourites

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FairestCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairestCat/gifts).



_Let us love nobly, and live, and add again  
Years and years unto years, till we attain  
To write threescore ; this is the second of our reign._  
\- John Donne, “The Anniversary”

 

The first hint of anything strange (well, stranger than usual) was the small whirlwind in Kade’s kitchen fire. Ashes and fragments of charred wood gathered themselves into a spinning top -- a miniature fairy ring stretched out like taffy -- wandered over the hearth long enough to blink thrice and miss it, and then fell into a messy heap on the floor.

Kade shook a tangled mess of practice spellknots free from her fingers and squinted at the fireplace. That was odd, even for Chariot. The old fey stronghold had more quirks than one might expect from a building that (when it was visible) looked like a rambling castle of warm yellow stone. So far as she’d discovered, though, they tended to be staircases that circled back to the bottom, cellar doors which opened to the tops of towers, and similar architectural games.

Thomas’ arrival distracted her from the spiral of ash. “Boliver’s brought us mail.” He tossed Kade a parcel wrapped in oiled leather and kicked out a chair from the table for himself, hanging his swordcane off the back of it.

Kade tore into the package: ah, books! She seized the topmost and checked the title page. She’d sent to the university at Lodun asking for a few volumes from her old teacher Galen Dubell’s library and, astonishingly, it seemed they’d granted her request. Perhaps the fact she had signed away in perpetuity any and all rights to the crown some people thought she had a claim to was finally sinking in.

Thomas broke the seal on his own letter and scanned it with the speed of a practiced courtier. “Well, that’s a relief.”

Kade had propped her bare feet on the table and was already several spells into a compendium of weather magic, its spine splayed open on her lap. She wiped her hand on her skirt before turning a fragile, crackling page. “Hm?”

“Falaise is pregnant.”

That pulled her attention away from the cramped calligraphy. “Good news, as long as she has the wits to make sure it resembles Roland.”

“It ought to." Thomas squinted at the last page. "According to Gideon, other than Roland Falaise keeps company only with her ladies in waiting these days. I suppose the poets got tiresome.”

So Falaise had had the good fortune to fill the role all mortal queens were required to. And that meant her brother Roland would soon be a father; an unnerving prospect, given their own father. Kade shuddered at the memory of Fulstan, and reminded herself yet again that he was dead. Not that her mother had been much better. “When I think of Ravenna desperately in need of an heir while Moire paraded her belly all about the court... it’s a wonder she didn’t have me drowned at birth. I would have.”

“Ravenna always was more ruthless than you.” Thomas stretched his feet out to the warmth of the fire, with only a slight hitch in the movement of his right leg. The elfshot wound in his thigh had healed as well as it ever would. “I’m sure she realized you could be useful, if you were properly trained.”

Kade’s mouth twisted. “Look how much luck she had with that.” She knotted one last spell in the abandoned yarn, tossed it over her shoulder into the fire, and wished Falaise’s child well with all her heart.

*

The second sign that something odd was afoot was Boliver’s disappearance.

Kade wanted to ask him to carry a letter back to Roland and Falaise with her felicitations on the news; she thought that would be less unsettling for them than pretending she didn’t know about it. But the phooka wasn’t in any of his usual retreats.

Chariot was the traditional “under hill” sort of fey castle; unless you had true sight from fey blood or gascoign powder, it looked like a smooth green mound in the centre of a mountain valley. Built of honey-coloured stone, it was comfortable and sprawling, with more rooms and towers than anyone really needed. Kade searched all of them, grumbling under her breath about creatures with wings building damned castles. She even climbed to the top of the highest tower, a process that involved going downstairs for more than half the way, and looked for him in the rafters where he liked to perch invisibly, terrifying pigeons. No Boliver.

Kade climbed back down (or up) the tower and found Thomas in the kitchen, rather messily cleaning a fowl for dinner. “Did Boliver say where he was going after he brought you that letter?”

Thomas shrugged. “No, but I’m sure he’ll be back, likely at the most inconvenient time possible.”

“Have you two been quarrelling again?” Kade looked narrowly at Thomas. He and Boliver enjoyed a state of mutual antagonism expressed in elaborate, polite invective.

“No more than usual,” Thomas protested, holding up greasy hands in denial. “He hasn’t even called me a useless fop lately.”

Kade sighed. If Boliver wanted to be difficult, fine. She rattled off, “As Queen of Air and Darkness and on my sovereignty of Chariot, I call Boliver Fay.”

Nothing happened: no wolfhound bounded in through the door, no ball of fire fell down the chimney and transformed into an irritable fay with a red beard. Kade paced the room for ten minutes, growing more and more worried until her fingers were wrapped around each other tightly enough to whiten the knuckles. Still no Boliver.

Kade couldn’t believe it: how could Boliver not be compelled to answer her summons? Or why? She swallowed. “He’d better have a bloody good reason.” Even to herself, she sounded more anxious than angry.

Thomas wasn’t fooled. “He’ll come.” He wiped his hands on a kitchen rag and took Kade by the shoulders with an encouraging squeeze. “If he isn’t here by morning, we’ll go find him.”

*

The third sign, and the last, came that evening.

Kade was lying across her bed, crunching on an apple and reading the old volume of weather spells, muttering the more difficult words under her breath. Something -- a breath of air on the nape of her neck, a shiver of warning over her scalp -- made her look up from the page just in time to see a screaming bundle of golden feathers streak through the window, eagle’s beak open and bronze claws outstretched. Before Kade could do anything but gape, it exploded into an aureole of down. As the feathers slowly settled on every surface, the form of a tall woman coalesced in the centre of the room.

Kade spat out downy fuzz and realized why Boliver had had the sense to absent himself from Chariot. She set her apple core down in a drift of feathers. “Hello, Moire.”

The Queen of Air and Darkness threw back rippling waves of coin-gold hair, filled her lungs in a heaving breath, and launched into a dramatic monologue. “Ungrateful daughter! How dare you usurp my title, steal my castles, and then give them away!”

Kade was reminded of her brief time as a travelling Columbine; the pointed finger and flared nostrils definitely took this performance into the realm of farce. Never mind how any fay could have the brass nerve to call someone ungrateful.

Moire went on declaiming. “And to let that caitiff Titania take Knockma! Think of my shock when I discovered her in my domain.”

“I didn’t usurp anything. I was your only heir.” Kade slid off her bed and stood up; she didn’t feel equal to continuing this conversation while prone.

“Nor did you even attempt to rescue me!”

Kade folded her arms tightly, resisting the familiar urge to smack her mother. “Was I supposed to harrow Hell for you? I had perfect confidence in your ability to escape on your own. As you have.” Both honestly curious and hoping to divert Moire, Kade asked, “How did you do it?”

Moire showed pointed teeth in a smug smile. “I lulled the guardians to sleep and wove a ladder from my hair. And their bones.”

Effective, if flashy. Kade fell back on human bluntness. “What do you want, Moire?”

Moire drew herself up again. “My home of Knockma.”

“I can’t give you that. Take it up with Titania; I’m sure you’ll find something she wants badly enough.” Picturing Titania’s irritation at having to deal with a rival she’d thought safely dispatched to Hell was the only entertaining element of this mess, as far as Kade was concerned.

“Then give me Chariot.”

That was going entirely too far. “No. It’s mine, and I’m not letting you turn my people out.”

“As the true Queen of Air and Darkness, Chariot is once again my possession,” Moire said. Shadows clotted around her shape, dimming the room. “And I don’t choose to let you stay.”

“You forget that I don’t have to do what you say,” Kade said, quite calmly, and took a step closer to her mother.

With his usual gift for complicating matters, Thomas chose that moment to appear in the doorway. He leaned on his cane, looking decidedly unsurprised. “Good evening, Kade. Who might your guest be?”

Kade shut her eyes for an instant and cursed the way Moire always caught her flatfooted. She should have thought to get Thomas out of Chariot, by hook or crook, before this could happen. “Mother, this is Thomas Boniface, late of the Queen’s Guard of Ile-Rien. Thomas, this is my mother Moire, the Queen of Air and Darkness, late of Hell.”

“A paramour, hm? At least you have good taste.” Moire studied Thomas from head to toe, lingering at several places along the way. "And how long do you plan on keeping him?"

Thomas made her his most elaborate court bow, the one which meant, basically, ‘go away and die quickly.’

Kade shut her eyes again. Perhaps if she kept them closed for long enough, Moire would grow bored and leave. No, not with a handsome mortal here to amuse her. She hastily opened her eyes and went to stand beside Thomas.

Moire smiled, gathering glamour from the air to weave into a garment of night and stars. “It is a very great pleasure to meet you, Thomas.”

“That won’t work,” Kade informed her. “I gave Thomas the ointment of sight a long time ago.”

With a disgusted gesture, Moire flicked the glamour away in a shower of sparks. “You have no sense of fun.”

“I never did,” Kade agreed.

*

The great kitchen of Chariot had hearths large enough to roast an ox. Kade’s household used one of the smaller ones in which only a sheep might fit. The fire slumbered, banked for the night; Moire pointed and it flared up blue-white, while Kade dragged the bleached oak table and chairs closer.

Thomas filled cups with the plain red wine of the valley and used the opportunity to study the two queens, past and present, sitting across from each other. Both were tall, blonde, and grey-eyed: there the resemblance ended. Moire’s hair slithered to her waist in smooth abundance, rather than flying out about her head in a random corona, and her mouth was achingly sculpted. Only the long, sharp nose was exactly the same on both firelit faces. And on both, the effect was rather predatory.

“Can’t you go live with those mortal relatives of yours?” Moire demanded.

“For the last time, no.” Kade pressed the heels of both hands against her eyelids. “I gave my word to stay away from the court in Vienne, and Ravenna is dead.”

“I thought she had died a long time ago. Wasn’t she old, as humans go?”

Kade upended her cup and finished the wine in one gulp. “She was fifty-four.” Her voice was more or less even.

“Oh.” Moire’s pale grey gaze focused on Kade in a new way. “How old are you again?”

“Twenty-five. Mother.” Moire couldn‘t hide her flinch, and Kade smirked. Thomas sipped wine to hide his own amusement. In many ways, he thought Kade was more Ravenna’s daughter than Moire’s, but he didn’t feel making that observation aloud would improve the temper of anyone else in the room. He poured more wine instead.

After the second bottle, the atmosphere grew more convivial and negotiations less fraught. Moire magnanimously agreed to give Kade Chariot as a reward for stewarding her mother’s possessions while she was in Hell. “Most of them, anyway,” she added, unable to keep from lamenting the loss of Knockma less than once each minute. Any “malcontents” who wanted to stay at Chariot could do so -- Thomas suspected Moire simply didn’t want to deal with Bolivar or the rest of the rather stroppy fay in Kade’s household. For her part, Kade agreed to let Moire repossess all her other lands with no hindrance, and to assist her (within carefully drawn limits) when she sought to retake Knockma.

“Why bargain, Kade? Won’t Chariot come to you in the end anyway?” Thomas asked, made tactless by far more rough red wine than he’d intended to drink.

Both women laughed, true peals of laughter deep in the belly until they were short of breath. In that moment they looked identical, and entirely unhuman. “Oh, how endearingly mortal,” Moire gasped.

“Indeed I am,” Thomas agreed. “Now explain the joke.”

“This is Fayre, not a human kingdom,” Kade said. “The laws of inheritance aren’t the kind you know. There will always be a Queen of Air and Darkness, but it doesn’t have to be me. It doesn’t even have to be a blood relation.”

Moire nodded. “There are two ways to become Queen: by inheritance, or by challenge.”

Thomas studied Kade’s worn dress and tangled hair. Queen or not, she still retained the same self-possession Ravenna had had, the quality that had always drawn him to the two of them. “Were you ever challenged?”

“A few times, just after my mother... went away. The ones who thought I was easy prey learned otherwise.” Kade drained her cup and thumped it on the table. “So one day someone will challenge Moire, or she’ll have another daughter, a full-blooded fay. And I won’t miss it.”

“Too bad. I rather liked the idea of being consort to the Queen of Air and Darkness.”

“There is no such thing,” Kade said dryly. “Only... companions, shall we say, of short or shorter duration.”

Moire smiled, and the firelight made her very white, very pointed teeth shine red.

*

In the morning, Moire was gone. Thomas found Kade on the battlements, leaning on the parapet and staring down the valley of Chariot. There was a sharp frost in the air and snow had fallen overnight; the sun shining on the long white slopes did nothing for his headache.

“What will Moire do now?” he asked her.

Kade shrugged. “Spend her time plotting to get Knockma back. If she thinks of a wager Titania would be tempted by, she might well manage it.”

“You miss it.”

“Yes, but I like Chariot almost as much. The climate is better. And it’s much more convenient not living underwater.”

Thomas leaned against the cold stone wall next to her. “And what do you plan to do, now that you’ve been deposed?”

She picked at loose bits of crumbling mortar. Thomas waited, having learned the signs of Kade gathering herself to speak. “I might go to Lodun.” She looked at him sidewise through tangled hair. “I’ve been thinking about finding a sorcerous tutor there for a while, but I doubted the university would take very well to having the Queen of Air and Darkness enroll as a student. Now, though...”

“There’s still a good deal of cold iron in Lodun,” Thomas pointed out. “The bells alone would make you uncomfortable.”

Kade nodded. “But something Dubell said to me long ago has been on my mind, the more so after I found elfshot could harm me. I may be more human than I know. And if I’m vulnerable to other fay magics, better I learn to counter them with human sorcery before the Unseelie Court figures it out too.”

“And where should I be?” A nut-sized chunk of mortar fell away under her prying fingers, and Thomas grabbed her hand to still it.

“You could stay and hold Chariot for me; Boliver would help--because I’d make him,” she added quickly as Thomas rolled his eyes. “Or you could come with me. If you wanted. Though I know there might not be anything for you in Lodun.”

Thomas laughed. “How little you know students, Kade. Anywhere there are duels, there’s a market for swordmasters.”

“Oh. Yes. Though I think magical duels may be more the sort of thing at Lodun,” she added doubtfully.

“Then I’ll start a fashion for the primitive kind, with actual blades.” He squeezed her hand. “Tell me why you hadn’t mentioned this before.”

Kade turned her head away and twisted a piece of hair around the fingers of her left hand, snarling it further. “I’m not... accustomed to wanting another person around. Before, if I needed to go somewhere, I went. But I wasn’t sure if you’d want to come with me, and I didn’t want to find out that you didn’t.”

“I’ll go anywhere with you,” Thomas said. “Just ask.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to FairestCat for this prompt and giving me the chance to revisit some of my favourite characters.
> 
> If you’re curious, I picture Chariot as somewhat resembling Segovia Castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_the_Alcazar,_Segovia.jpg).


End file.
